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The
paddling battle
Against
experts' advice, My mom still spanks me. Worse than that, she sometimes threatens to
do it in front of my friends. She'll say things like, "You want your pants
to come down right here, young man?" It is so embarrassing. ... What
really scares me is that one day she might really do it.
It takes more than a village to raise a child, says Caroline Norton.
It takes, on occasion, a hairbrush applied forcefully to 6-year-old
Lindsey's bottom.
"I find that spanking is the only method that works for us," said
Norton, 35, of Aberdeen, Scotland. "I've tried all the other methods."
Times have changed, but the oldest tools of parental discipline –
hairbrushes, belts, paddles and wooden spoons – largely have not.
That's not news to Bill and Jill, who described their experiences in
e-mail interviews, and asked that their last names not be published.
Many child-development experts, who overwhelmingly discourage
aggressive, harsh discipline measures – especially corporal punishment. –
find the prevalence of spanking alarming.
"No matter how angry you are or how much you want to change the
behavior, it is never OK to spank a child," says the Canadian
Institute of Child Health's fact sheet on discipline.
Most U.S. pediatricians second that. While acknowledging some dissent
within its own ranks, the American Academy of Pediatrics has a firm policy
against spanking and urges its members to counsel parents likewise.
Spanking "has negative consequences and is not more effective than
other approaches for dealing with undesired behavior in children,"
according to the AAP's policy statement. Spanking "teaches children that
aggressive behavior is a solution to conflict and has been associated with
increased aggression in preschool and school-age children."
Even the threat of spanking "can alter the parent-child relationship,
which makes discipline substantially more difficult when physical
punishment is no longer an option (such as in the teen years)," according
to the academy.
A 1998 survey of AAP members, however, turned up some disagreement.
"Fourteen percent of pediatricians say they support, in principle, the
limited use of corporal punishment by parents," according to the academy.
The rest said they were either generally or completely opposed to the
practice.
A new survey by child-advocacy groups Civitas Initiative and Zero to
Three concluded: "Most parents condone spanking; child development
research doesn't."
Not sparing the rod
Right or wrong, a lot of American children are getting paddled.
Sixty-two percent of American adults say they condone spanking as a
regular form of punishment, according to the Civitas survey, "What
Grown-Ups Understand About Child Development: A National Benchmark Study."
Thirty-seven percent of parents of young children think it is
appropriate to spank children age 2 or younger as a regular form of
punishment, found the survey, underwritten by Milwaukee toymaker Brio.
"Why would anyone spank an infant or toddler?" asked Ron Lally,
co-director of the Center for Child and Family Studies at WestEd, a
nonprofit research group based in San Francisco. "There is nothing he or
she can learn from it, other than to distrust bigger and more powerful
people."
The Civitas findings confounded Lally and other experts, as many parents in the same survey also agreed "that [spanking] can lead to children acting more aggressively and that it will not lead to better self-control." In other words, these mothers and fathers cut their teeth in the child-centered era of positive parenting. They say they know better than their grim, Dickensian forebears. So why do they talk the timeout and walk the whack on the backside? First, experts say, many of today's parents feel perpetually under the gun – by the pace of life, by the demands of work and family, by the many threats modernity has brought. "The stresses on young parents have logarithmically increased in the past 20 years," child-development expert T. Berry Brazelton recently told U.S. News & World Report. Stress, especially economic pressure, can exacerbate emotional parental overreactions, Ellen E. Pinderhughes, a researcher at Vanderbilt University, reported in the September issue of the Journal of Family Psychology. A father of three coming off a month of minimum-wage double shifts will be hard-pressed to respond thoughtfully and constructively when he's rousted by a late-night call saying Junior's just been picked up for shoplifting Pokemon cards. Friction can also flare up in well-to-do, well-meaning homes where family calendars are obliterated by jobs, errands, volunteer duties, band camps and hockey practices – a lifestyle reflective of "hyper-parenting," child psychiatrist Alvin Rosenfeld and journalist Nicole Wise say in their new book of the same name. "Family life should not be overloaded with chores and commitments that add unnecessary resentment to daily life," the authors write. What you know ... that ain't so Something else is fanning the flames of parental aggravation: ignorance. The Civitas study revealed widespread misunderstanding among parents and even grandparents about what constitutes "normal" behavior, especially in young children. For example:
The result: Many children may be getting berated, nagged, shaken, slapped, spanked or grounded for toileting mishaps, tantrums, forgetfulness and other behavior they cannot help. Appropriate care may be refused or even criticized as "spoiling" by parents and grandparents who don't know any better, researchers said. Consider:
But allowing the choice and soothing the infant are healthy and appropriate, the researchers said. Most parents of young children said they believed that a 6-month-old could be spoiled, and nearly half believed that letting a 2-year-old get down from the dinner table to play before the rest of the family has finished was spoiling.
Not so. Children under 3 years old are too young to follow rules, the Canadian Health Network says. And many children "misbehave" simply because they are tired, lonely, bored, overexcited or ill, the network notes in its fact sheets. Mothers are generally better versed than fathers about developmental benchmarks, and college graduates know more than those with less education, the Civitas survey found. But "future parents" – childless couples who said they planned to have children – were considered woefully uninformed about normal developmental stages, the researchers said. And one-third of respondents admitted feeling "very unprepared" for parenthood. Parents also were often misguided about the effect of their own negative behaviors on small children, the survey found. Even newborns can be affected by the moods of others, including anxious or depressed parents. Children as young as six months can suffer long-term emotional effects from witnessing violence, the researchers said. The danger of anger Whatever the method or motive, aggressive discipline can harm long after the episode ends, most developmental experts say. "The more a child is hit, the more likely it is that the child as an adult will hit his or her own children and spouse," said retired school psychologist Nadine Block, director of the Center for Effective Discipline, an Ohio nonprofit organization that provides educational materials about the effects of physical punishment on children. "Spanking increases aggression and anger instead of teaching responsibility," the American Academy of Pediatrics concluded last year in a report called "Discipline and Your Child." "Parents may intend to stay calm but often do not, and regret their actions later," the AAP said in the report. A vast body of research documents a link between children who are harshly disciplined and turn later to criminal or violent behavior. Even severe verbal abuse – chronic screaming, cursing, humiliation or threats – can wound self-esteem and plant the seeds of smoldering resentment that may explode later, developmental experts say. "The social and emotional development of children are just as important as their intellectual advancement," Brandeis University dean Jack P. Shonkoff said last month at the release of "From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development," a report by the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine. How young children feel is as important as how they think," Shonkoff said Not all adults agree. Some parents and pediatricians espouse a tougher tack. "The effectiveness of milder disciplinary tactics depends upon their being backed up by more severe disciplinary tactics when necessary," Robert E. Larzelere, director of residential research for Father Flanagan's Boys' Home in Boys Town, Nebraska, wrote in a 1998 article called "Combining Love and Limits in Authoritative Parenting." Larzelere advocates "a conditional sequence model" of discipline: reasoning, followed if necessary by noncorporal punishment, such as a timeout, followed if necessary by a corporal "enforcer such as a two-swat spank." Dr. Den A. Trumbull and Dr. S. DuBose Ravenel tend to agree. "Numerous other studies support spanking as a legitimate form of discipline," the pediatricians wrote in the magazine Focus on the Family with Christian evangelist Dr. James Dobson. "For more defiant children who refuse to comply with or be persuaded by milder consequences, spanking is useful, effective and appropriate," they wrote. Trumbull and Ravenel believe spanking may be appropriate for children as young as 18 months. Other proponents include conservative Christian organization ParentNow of Royal Oak, Mich. Its Web site ProSpank promotes what the group calls "biblical discipline," including corporal punishment. What's a parent to do? Parents can be torn by such conflicting advice, and their discipline patterns may evolve and change over time. Such is the case with Betsy Koval, who has five children ages 11 months to 10 years. Child No. 1 got an occasional, single swat or two through the clothes. With No. 2, "we found out that many times this only escalated the situation," said Koval, of Lansing, Mich. Children Nos. 3, 4 and 5 have gotten a mixed discipline bag. Koval said she and husband Jim tried mightily not to spank, "although in moments of desperation, it has still happened." Instead, she said, she tries to empathize with her children – "get behind their eyes" and "feel what they feel" when they are seething. She tries to meet their anger and tantrums with a close hold and a quiet soothing voice. Most developmental experts would applaud Koval's approach. They say getting a grip on youthful rebellion begins with understanding the difference between punishment and discipline. The purpose of discipline in its literal meaning is to teach (in this case, what is acceptable behavior). Punishment, similar to retribution, has the narrower goal of penalizing wrongdoing. It's a negative, reactive method with limited effectiveness. And it can backfire. Thus, the experts urge parents to develop alternatives to spanking, such as time-outs and removal of privileges. The aim, they say, should be to redirect behavior while preserving children's emotional well-being. Read more about alternatives to spanking. "It is hard at times to give up something that seems to momentarily 'work' when everything is so out of control," said Koval. "But I truly believe it is not the right thing to do." |
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